Lancaster

‘Pleasantly seated’ at the point where a branch of the Great North Road crossed the River Lune, Lancaster was officially Lancashire’s chief administrative centre – although that role had largely been usurped by the more commodiously-situated Preston. It was described in the 1670s (echoing William Camden a century earlier) as ‘a place at present indifferent large ... not a town much frequented nor inhabited by tradesmen but chiefly by husbandmen, as lying in a good soil’. Infra, ‘Preston’; R. Blome, Britannia (1673), 135. Lancaster’s economy rested mainly on animal husbandry and the marketing of agricultural products, particularly livestock, while a few basic service trades were probably sustained by the town’s hosting of the county assizes and its role as the provincial headquarters of the duchy of Lancaster. HP Commons 1604-29; M. Mullett, ‘Reformation and renewal, 1450-1690’ in Hist. Of Lancaster ed. A. White (Edinburgh, 2001), 80, 92, 102-3. According to the 1664 hearth tax returns, the town contained 187 households (including 55 considered too poor to pay), suggesting an overall population of about 850. E179/250/11.

By its royal charter of 1604, Lancaster was governed by a corporation consisting of an annually elected mayor and two bailiffs, assisted by 12 capital burgesses and 12 ‘burgesses for the commonalty’. VCH Lancs. viii, 44; Cal. Lancaster Charters ed. J. Brownbill, J.R. Nuttall (Lancaster, 1929), 18; T. Pape, Charters of the City of Lancaster (Lancaster, 1952), 55. Before the end of James’s reign, however, and after ‘much dissention and disagreement’ among the freemen at mayoral elections, a number of changes to the borough’s constitution were agreed and introduced. For the future, the mayor would be appointed by seniority and in rotation from among seven ‘benchers’ or aldermen elected by the corporation from the capital burgesses, whose number would thus be increased to 18 (not including the mayor). In the event of disagreement over the choice of a new bencher, the borough would resort to the somewhat unusual expedient of convening the electoral college that had traditionally selected the mayor – a body known as ‘the forty’ – to decide the matter. VCH Lancs. viii, 44-5; W.O. Roper, Materials for the Hist. of Lancaster (Chetham Soc. n.s. lxi), 199-204; VCH Lancs. viii, 40. Lancaster had first sent Members to Parliament in 1295, but its franchise had lapsed in the 1330s and had not been restored until the 1520s. Mullett, ‘Reformation and renewal’, 81; HP Commons 1509-58, ‘Lancaster’. The franchise was vested in the freemen – of whom there were 375 in 1664 – and the returning officers were the mayor and bailiffs. C219/42/2/140; Lancaster Charters ed. Brownbill, Nuttall, 18.

The borough’s principal electoral patron during the Jacobean and early Caroline Parliaments had been the chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, who had generally been able to fill both seats with high-ranking duchy officials. HP Commons, 1604-29; R.C.L. Sgroi, ‘The electoral patronage of the duchy of Lancaster, 1604-28’, PH xxvi. 313, 316, 324. In the elections to the Short Parliament in the spring of 1640, Lancaster, ‘the most loyal of duchy constituencies’, continued to do the chancellor’s bidding, or so it seems. Sgroi, ‘Duchy of Lancaster’, 324. On 23 March, Lancaster returned the Lancashire gentleman and deputy lieutenant Roger Kirkbye and the London financier John Harrison. C219/42/2/140. Although Kirkbye had no formal connection with the duchy, the fact that he also owned no estates in the immediate vicinity of Lancaster may indicate that he had relied on the good offices of the chancellor, Lord Newburgh (Sir Edward Barrett†). Infra, ‘Roger Kirkbye’. Harrison was a native of Lancaster and lord of the nearby manor and grange of Beaumont and therefore by no means a carpetbagger. Nevertheless, as a London-based customs farmer whose main estate lay in Hertfordshire, he may well have relied in part upon Newburgh’s patronage. If Newburgh did indeed recommend him to the borough, it is likely that he was acting on behalf of those at court keen to procure seats for financiers such as Harrison who were closely tied to the crown interest. Infra, ‘John Harrison’; Lancaster Charters ed. Brownbill, Nuttall, 22-3.

In the elections to the Long Parliament in the autumn of 1640, the borough returned Harrison again but replaced Kirkbye – who had been returned as a knight of the shire – with Thomas Fanshawe. Return of Members, i. 490. An Essex gentlemen and son of a courtier, Fanshawe almost certainly had Newburgh’s backing. Nevertheless, he also enjoyed a strong interest himself as recorder of Lancaster and auditor of the duchy’s lands north of the Trent – both offices acquired as a result of his father’s extensive involvement with the duchy in the early seventeenth century. Infra, ‘Thomas Fanshawe’.

Both of Lancaster’s MPs sided with the king during the civil war – and possibly a majority of the inhabitants were similarly inclined until the county’s royalist forces plundered and burned the town in 1643. Warr in Lancs. 28-9; VCH Lancs. viii, 17; Burton’s Diary, iii. 270-1; M.A. Mullett, ‘Conflict, politics and elections in Lancaster, 1660-88’, NH xix. 61; Craven, ‘Lancs.’, 51. Having disabled Fanshawe and Harrison from sitting, the House, on 14 October 1645, ordered writs to be issued for holding new elections at Lancaster, and on 6 February 1646 the borough returned Sir Robert Bindlos and Thomas Fell. CJ iv. 308a; C219/43/2/13. Like his father, who had represented Lancaster in the 1628 Parliament, Bindlos probably owed his return primarily to his proprietorial interest as one of the area’s leading landowners. His extensive estate in Lancashire and the adjacent counties included the impropriate rectory of Lancaster church and most of the tithes in the parish. Infra, ‘Sir Robert Bindlos’. However, he too may have profited in part from his connection with Newburgh, who seems to have acted as his de facto guardian for much of the early 1640s. Newburgh had died a year before the Lancaster election, but he may have bequeathed some of his influence to the vice-chancellor and attorney of the duchy, Christopher Bannister. Similarly, it may have been Fell’s dealings as a lawyer at the duchy court and the Lancaster assizes that recommended him to the freemen as a suitable man-of-business at Westminster. There is certainly no evidence that he owned much property in or near the town. Infra, ‘Sir Robert Bindlos’; ‘Thomas Fell’; PRO30/26/21, pp. 13-14; Duchy of Lancaster Office-Holders ed. R. Somerville, 95, 100.

Neither Fell nor (pace most authorities) Bindlos were secluded at Pride’s Purge in December 1648. But while Fell took his seat in the Rump, Bindlos was granted leave to go into France for six months and played no known part in public affairs again until 1657. In October 1652, the corporation formally broke its electoral ties with the duchy (of which Fell was now the vice-chancellor) with the following order.

Also for that divers times heretofore there have been burgesses for the Parliament for this town, gentlemen who were strangers to the said town, not knowing the state thereof ... It is conceived ... that thereby divers inconveniences have ensued, the said burgesses in Parliament being not only strangers lying far distant from this town and county but also unknown to the inhabitants thereof, so that they could not make known their wants or grievances unto them. Upon serious consideration whereof, it is ordered that no stranger or any other shall be elected burgesses for ... Parliament but such as shall be sworn of [i.e. freemen] and in the said town of Lancaster. Roper, Hist. of Lancaster, 201-2.

Under the Instrument of Government of 1653, Lancaster was reduced to a single parliamentary seat, and in the elections to the first protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1654 the freemen returned one of the town’s senior officeholders and wealthiest inhabitants Henry Porter I. Infra, ‘Henry Porter I’. Porter was returned for Lancaster again in the elections to the second protectoral Parliament on 14 August 1656; the election indenture was signed by about 20 of the burgesses. C219/45, unfol. Having regained its second seat in the elections to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659, the borough returned William West and Porter’s son and fellow municipal office-holder Henry Porter II on 12 January. Lancs. RO, DP 522/4/1, unpag. West, a prosperous attorney, had served as governor of Lancaster castle during the mid-1640s, and by the late 1650s he had emerged as one the area’s leading landowners. Infra, ‘William West’.

With Fell having died in 1658 and Bindlos showing no interest in resuming his parliamentary career (such as it was), Lancaster was left without formal representation at Westminster in the year after the fall of the protectorate in April 1659. In the elections to the 1660 Convention, the borough returned West and the chancellor of the duchy, Sir Gilbert Gerard – possibly in defiance of the October 1652 municipal order. HP Commons 1660-90. The corporation’s surrender in 1660 of the crown fee farm rent, which it had purchased ‘from the late powers’, and other loyal gestures, helped West, Porter and their royalist allies in preventing Charles Stanley, 8th earl of Derby from effecting a thorough purge of the municipal office-holders in the early 1660s. CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 49; 1661-2, p. 517; HP Commons 1660-90; Mullett, ‘Elections in Lancaster’, 64-5.